RomanByzantium,
well, I believe that we express the same faith but differently. you know that the early unified church was very diverse in its understanding of the faith. Why can't there be diversity now?
Diversity in some things is fine - however when that diversity touches fundamentals, then it is a problem...this is why so much of that early "diversity" you speak of ended in heresies and schisms, many of which were never healed.
As for Orthodoxy and Catholicism having the "same faith" but simply with a different expression, I beg to differ. Catholicism has come to define itself
solely in judicial terms, to the point that it has invented doctrines alien to both
Western and Eastern Fathers. One could not begin to speak with any seriousness of "indulgences" without first having a concept of salvation which would have been just as foreign to St.Gregory the Great or St.Vincent of Lerins as it would have been to St.Athanasios or St.Photios the Great.
we catholics are open to the diversity of the faith but you guys are not. you guys want us to abandon our traditions and replace them with yours.
What the Orthodox world would like, is for the Latins to return to their
own,
Orthodox traditions, both in terms of faith and praxis. Orthodoxy does not have a problem with the Church of St.Gregory the Great - but that is not what the RCC is, and it hasn't been this for centuries.
Of course, it's impossible to go into a time machine and just set everything back - thus the only real option would be some kind of revision of Latin practices (perhaps starting with a return to pre-Vatican II RC usages, which at least still exist within the living memory of the RCC...these in turn could be corrected so as to expunge from them doctrinal errors which crept into Latin liturgical services).
Is that why you go to mass, to be impressed? I thought that it was to recieve jesus.
If I went to a family gathering where my grandmother was present, only to find everyone was treating her contemptuously (indulging in riotous behaviour in front of her, making light of what she had to say, etc.), I would be as guilty as they if I just sat there and played along. Sure I could try and sneak in a kind conversation, and perhaps
not myself say anything rude to her, but this would not undue the harm of my own indifference to their awful behaviour.
Frankly, the "new mass" and the "new attitude" of the RC's is borish, and not too seldom, sacreligious. It's more appropriate to a secularized protestantism that doesn't pretend to hold it's possessions as being anything sacred, than it is to a church which
says it offers the holy oblation upon it's altars. The whole approach in most RC temples is not simply too casual as far as most Orthodox are concerned, but downright inappropriate. God is not mocked - a very simple Biblical maxim that many forget...the idea that He will continue to dwell amongst blasphemers is neither Biblical, nor sensible.
I guess that you haven't seen a tridentine mass, which is the one I go to. and the new mass is very fine and inspiring when done as prescribed not with all the additions and deletions that many parishes take liberty in.
With some important revisions (mainly removal of certain troubling post-schism additions), the Tridentine Missal could (in the case of a hypothetical reunion of Rome with Orthodoxy) become a viable Orthodox service. I think people here are refering to the "New Mass", which is the rule in the RCC (and not the Tridentine Missal, which you either have to get special permission for, or be a "renegade" to avail yourself of, in the RCC). While I've heard plenty of apologies for the New Mass (typically "it
can be said with great solemnity), these ring hollow - the reality is that it lends itself to a type of "worship" (if it can be called that) which is more humanistic than Theocentric. And that is what you see in most Latin parishes now days - self help and perhaps a little political activism dressed up as the good news of salvation.
Seraphim
